Latest News
The Observer drops the second shoe in the Cummings scandal on its front page – the news that he visited his parents in Durham again in the middle of April after staying with them at the end of March. How do they know this? Thanks to an eagle-eyed member of the public:
Robin Lees, 70, a retired chemistry teacher from [Barnard Castle], says he saw Cummings and his family walking by the Tees before getting into a car around lunchtime on 12 April.
Lees said: “I was a bit gobsmacked to see him, because I know what he looks like. And the rest of the family seemed to match – a wife and child. I was pretty convinced it was him and it didn’t seem right because I assumed he would be in London.”
He added: “I went home and told my wife, we thought he must be in London. I searched up the number plate later that day and my computer search history shows that.”
I find it incredible that this man is so unashamed about being a tell-tale he actually flaunts the fact that he plugged Cummings’s number plate into Google on his computer. If Mr Lees had been born in East Germany rather than England, I have little doubt about which state agency he would have worked for.
Keir Starmer has now stuck the boot in, but I don’t think Boris will budge on this one.
Stay Alert, Stay Safe
Great spot by Andrew Mahon, the brilliant journalist who came up with the Crimson Tide metaphor about our handling of the crisis. (He thinks governments around the world behaved like the panicky nuclear submarine commander played by Gene Hackman in the 25 year-old Cold War thriller, rather than his level-headed second-in-command played by Denzil Washington.) A campaign aimed at children in Canada dating back to the early 90s with the slogan “Stay Alert/Stay Safe.”
Andrew has another great piece in Hector Drummond Magazine, this one about “our” NHS.
You Can Register a Death, But Not a Birth
Got an interesting email from a reader:
Our daughter was born at St Thomas’s hospital in London on February 18th and we cannot get a birth certificate for her as councils have stopped all registrations other than deaths.
I understand we have bigger issues with what is going on but my husband and I are feeling increasingly stressed and irritated by this. Without a birth certificate we cannot get our daughter a passport. It does leave us feeling quite trapped! We have plans to attend a wedding in Chicago in August – which is of course unlikely to happen – however if flights do go ahead and we are left unable to go due to a lack of passport for one of our children we are likely to incur the cost of the trip. However, the money isn’t the main issue but the continued lack of freedom that has become our way of life. It feels extremely claustrophobic to think we couldn’t travel once restrictions are lifted – potentially for many months whilst waiting for the certificate.
Has anyone else has raised this with you? Surely thousands of babies will have been born in lockdown and others must be impacted by this. Lambeth council have told me they are unlikely to start to register births until September – that is over seven months of babies with no birth certificates – followed by what I expect to be a long wait with the passport office. I understand the same is true of weddings – however as individuals they could still travel with ease and flexibility.
I wonder if Boris and Carrie are also waiting for a birth certificate for Wilfred? Or is it one rule for them and… etc., etc.
Facebook Censors Sci-Fi Drawing
Last week, I posted a picture a reader had sent me of a drawing that had appeared in an Italian magazine in 1962 depicting life in 2022 because it seemed eerily prescient. The reader had discovered it in a Facebook group dedicated to sci-fi memorabilia, but don’t try and repost it on Facebook because the moderators won’t let you. A reader in Germany tells me he got the above message when he tried to do that, informing him it was “Partially wrong information. Tested by independent fact checker.” It included a link to an article on a Turkish website by Ali Osman Arabaci, presumably the “independent fact checker” being referred to. Arabaci writes:
It is not possible to say that the image depicts the quarantine in 2022. The visuals are made with city traffic and ideas to reduce it… In the box titled, it is stated that the traffic problem can be solved with vehicles similar to small transportation vehicles that are considered as scooters today…
In other words, it is also possible to qualify the claim as a disconnection from the wrong types of information.
Not sure Google Translate has got that last bit quite right, but you get the general idea. That’s something the artist failed to anticipate – in the future people won’t be allowed to see his depictions of the future because it might lead to wrongthink.
Lockdown Land
Guy de la Bédoyère has written another superb essay for this site about the psychological state the lockdown has left people in. It’s called “Lockdown Land” and I urge you to read it. Here are the concluding two sentences:
Not long before the virus crisis took hold my three-year-old granddaughter was supposed to be going out for a walk. “I’m not ready,” she said. It soon transpired that this was not a statement about not having her coat or shoes on but a more metaphysical observation of her state of mind. “I’m not ready” meant she was not disposed to going out at all. Ever. She would therefore never be ready.
I am reminded by that every time I hear someone saying “I’m not going back to work until I feel safe”, or “I’m not sending my child back to school until it is safe to do so”. Such sentiments are conveniently couched in rational terms but in reality cloak an emotional reluctance ever to return. Right now they represent this country’s biggest obstacle to recovery. The world has changed and we can never go back to where we were, but whatever we do we have to face up to the realities Lockdown Land has closed so many people’s eyes to and not hide beneath the bedclothes where we might suffocate instead.
Another Hatchet Job
Philip Ball, a science journalist, has written a piece in Prospect attacking lockdown sceptics that, even by his standards, is quite breathtakingly pompous. He has form here – he wrote a piece in the New Statesman a couple of years ago that got a bunch of stuff about me wrong (although he also got some things right, to be fair). Prior to this, he got some things about Dominic Cummings wrong, too, and Dom responded in his usual bracing style. I wrote about both those incidents, and corrected Ball’s errors, in a blog post for the Spectator.
In this piece, Ball argues that sceptics like me – and Hitchens and Delingpole – are part of an “infodemic”. That word was coined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) back in February to describe the spread of fake news about SARS-CoV-2 on social media. Indeed, the WHO urged the tech giants to remove any suspect content about Covid and, as we know, both Facebook and YouTube have done precisely that (see above). Ball is wholly supportive of this censorship
Andrew Pattison, the WHO’s Digital Business Solutions Manager, met with representatives from Google, Apple, Airbnb, Lyft, Uber and Salesforce, among others, at Facebook’s headquarters in Silicon Valley and urged them to remove any “misinformation”, by which he meant any content the WHO disapproves of. And he expressed the hope that all material that isn’t “responsible”, not just content about Covid, would be removed from social media in future. “I think what would be very exciting is to see this emergency changed into a long-term sustainable model, where we can have responsible content on these platforms,” he said.
You would think that as a journalist Ball would disapprove of rich and powerful men deciding what the public can and can’t read, but no. He thoroughly approves of the WHO’s “responsible” approach, overlooking the fact that the WHO itself has disseminated more “fake news” and “misinformation” about the virus than David Icke. Remember that famous tweet saying there was “no human to human transmission”? That’s the tip of the iceberg.
Ball thinks anyone who dissents from official Covid orthodoxy – or, rather, whatever the WHO decides is the “responsible” thing to say, even though it changes its mind about that from one day to the next – is guilty of trafficking in “fake news” that will undermine public confidence in science and medicine, such as the hypothesis that “the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory”. He neglects to mention that that particular “conspiracy theory” – he calls it that – is believed by Dr Luc Montagnier, joint winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, and is currently under investigation by multiple intelligence agencies. Ball says such “falsehoods” can be “literally lethal” – that is, people reading an article on Lockdown Sceptics raising doubts about the scientific basis of the two-metre rule might end up neglecting social distancing rules, catch Covid and die. I suppose that’s possible – although, as John Ioannidis pointed out, if you’re under-65 you’re more likely to die in a road traffic accident than from COVID-19 and, as I pointed out yesterday, if you’re under-15 you’re more likely to be struck by lightning – four times more likely, in fact.
But the real problem with this argument isn’t that it exaggerates the risk of dying from Covid, but that it underplays the risks of following the advice pumped out by public health authorities and other organs of the state. For instance, the “Guidance for social or community care and residential settings” published by Public Health England on February 25th that assured people it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected”. As we now know, about a third of all deaths from COVID-19 have occurred in care homes. Indeed, if I had to sum up the Government’s approach to managing this pandemic in a one-sentence slogan, I’d say: “Protecting the healthy, endangering the vulnerable.” If more people had been sceptical about this and other official advice – if journalists hadn’t felt inhibited by finger-wagging colleagues like Philip Ball – there’d be fewer Covid deaths, not more.
As the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies put it: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Ball’s article is called ‘The Epidemiology of Misinformation’. If only Facebook would ban the use of laboured coronavirus metaphors, that might actually be a useful service.
New Poster From NHS Puts People in Wrong Place
Shouldn’t those people be under the bed?
Theme Tune Suggestions
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers: “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest, “I fought the law” by the Clash, “Caught by the Fuzz‘ by Supergrass, “Jailbreak” by Thin Lizzy and “Gallows Pole” by Led Zeppelin
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
Last week, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Apologies that Lockdown Sceptics is a bit shorter than usual today. Drank a little too much wine last night and am now going to try to walk off my hangover. Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It still takes me about nine hours a day, what with doing these updates, moderating your comments and commissioning original material. If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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This Cummings stuff is a massive distraction. While all this is going on the press are not asking important questions about the futility of lockdown, the futility of quarantine, the futility of distancing, the futility of the schools being closed, the destruction of the economy, the removal of our freedom. Nope, lets ask a million questions about a hapless civil servant. I don’t care about one man not following the rules, I’ve not been following the rules for 3 months. Ask some serious bloody questions about this whole charade, all this does is add credence to the idea that a man should be arrested for seeing his Mum.
it’s not a distraction it’s a calculated plan to make the frightened think that it can’t be that bad because the people at the top of Government are ignoring the lockdown so maybe it isn’t as dangerous as they first thought. It’s gonna take a few weeks before all the feeble minded NHS clapping imbeciles can build up enough courage to leave the house and this is part of the plan to entice these weak wristed liberal bed wetters out.
I’m going the other way, although I hope to be wrong as it would mean they want us out of this mess. But from everything that’s going on, all this scandal has done is further the political divide, but not actually question the lockdown in the first place. Everyone (media and politicians) are coming from a default position of lockdown good, and then Cummings good or bad. Which is irrelevant really. There needs to be some sort of MSM pushback against the whole thing and we’ve had zero. Marr this morning was just rambling on about Cummings, ask some bloody questions that matter!
Sorry, a bit ranty today. The lack of representation of our stance from and major platform leaves me feeling quite lonely and angry.
Well, that is one theory. Another is that Cummings thought he could get away with something that few people could even attempt. Most middle-aged couples in his position would have to stay in their own homes under similar circumstances – AND the key question to ask is why could Cummings not have done so!
The question that the press need to ask Cummings is
Are you bereft of any public responsibility as, according to the government and yourself, you have willingly put the lives of your parents at risk or do you know that the whole social distancing is complete nonsense even know you helped create it?
These are the only two choices and I don’t think anybody believes he seriously thought he was endangering anyone so the answer must be he doesn’t believe his own rhetoric. If that is the case then the lockdown must be lifted immediately.
Exactly this, and he was abusing his power and position to flout rules that he imposed on the rest of us that devastated lives, last time I checked we’re not in Stalinist Russia, so, there need to be consequences. Not because lockdown isn’t a load of nonsense, but this clearly proves they know it is.
Last I checked we pretty much are in Stalinist Russia. 🙁
They weren’t asking those questions anyway and nor does it seem likely that they would have been!
There seems to be a greater dissemination of sceptic material out there, and even ‘the science’ is undermining the lockdown; so I think it’s possible there may have been some rumblings. Not now though.
You are crediting the MSM with both brains and the cojones to go against the flow. Not something I would bet on.
Good point. Reading it back it does sound a bit far fetched!
‘…the press are not asking important questions about etc etc….’ When have they ever during this manufactured crisis?
I can’t help but be reminded of Jonathan Sumption’s response to the BBC reporter’s question as to whether he’d observed the lockdown rules:
“I comply with the law because I don’t wish to place a weapon in the hands of people like you.”
Waiting for Piers Morgan to visit his parents (?) today or tomorrow in response to Cummings breaking the rules.
What’s great about this is that it sets a precedent. Anyone doing the same cannot be fined.
What’s not so good is that the precedent it sets will mainly apply to the Westminster crowd.
Precedents are for everyone in law
True, but police speaking to someone and taking no further action is not a precedent. Another police force might charge, and a court convict.
May be wrong, but I think a Crown Court (or above) ruling is needed to create a precedent.
Morgan has two parents ?!
“as I pointed out yesterday, if you’re under-15 you’re more likely to be struck by lightening – four times more likely, in fact.”
yes – i saw a couple of dark haired kids go for a walk and come back with blonde highlights. Happens to older people too … my auburn locks are turning a light grey.
But seriously ….. https://writingexplained.org/lightning-vs-lightening-difference
The reason dentists are closed in England is because of one lady namely the Chief Dental Officer for England Sara Hurley . Many European countries have dentists working and performing aerosol generating procedures eg Germany, Sweden, Denmark . How can we blow a collective raspberry to this lady who should win the Order of Karen in the Queens Birthday Honours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Hurley
The only possible good thing about it is that people who support the lockdown may actually need to have viable teeth (that need a filling or maybe root canal) pulled out like in mediaeval times. I do hope so. It might help focus their minds.
Last time I had anything done at the dentist, she (the dentist) wore a face mask, vizor and gloves. Assuming this is “normal”, why should there be any problem now?
Good point! Mine too.
Mine tried to get me to wear a pair of goggles.
Actually that stops stuff getting splashed in your eye during treatment. No harm in such precautions when they are genuinely helpful. I have always admired dentists for putting up with the horrible things that must lurk inside people’s gobs.
Exactly! For example, if you’re having your teeth descaled, there’s a ton of bacteria flying around with the gunk and getting some in the eye could be a problem for some people.
Because dentists wear PPE as normal, I really don’t see why they can’t be operating again now.
Also the goggles are used to shield your eyes against the harsh glare of the light that dentists use.
It’s great that Cummings is hanging on in there. It means everyone can totally disregard everything the government says about lockup. I’m ignoring the whole thing from now on.
The public are still a bunch of rule following zombies unfortunately. Until they are told in no uncertain terms, they will keep this up
You may ignore it, and I applaud the sentiment, but we all still have to queue to go into supermarkets and the dentists, opticians, most small shops, gyms, restaurants, cafes, hotels, etc are still closed, we still can’t travel or have family travel from abroad to visit us. I have ignored this lockdown from the beginning, I’m so much as I walked my dog As often as I wanted and shopped just when I needed to, but the thing is, businesses aren’t allowed to ignore it, so it doesn’t really matter what any of us do personally, the government has still got us locked down, to all intent and purpose. Has any one read on the Spectator about what the owner of Weatherspoons is going to do to when this does eventually end? The conditions he is going to impose in his pubs would make no sane drinker want to drink in one of his establishments ever again. (If they ever did in the first place…)
Yeah but that would all fall apart on the first night when everyone was pissed.
But businesses cannot because they would undoubtedly be taken to court – even if they could get their workers to turn up.
Always have Tenchy.
The Dominic Cummings debacle has exposed the true extent of how woefully ignorant the general public are as to the enforceability of the lockdown ‘rules’. Because I have a legal background it is easy for me to pick at the loopholes and scrutinise the ‘law’, but the government were clearly relying on the fact that the vast majority of Joe Public do not have this background and would not start looking at statutes on gov.uk, instead just swallowing whatever the government tells them to do even though it’s not technically legally binding. I think it’s irrelevant as to whether what Cummings did was illegal or not, and the MSM who are currently arguing over this matter are totally missing the point. The point is that, as I have previously stated, the average member of the public is not going to scrutinise the provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 in great detail, so legal technicalities are totally irrelevant – it doesn’t matter that Cummings ‘acted within the law’. The public are only familiar with the fear-mongering government line, not the law itself, and that government line is and has been, throughout this lockdown, the standard of behaviour by which we, and… Read more »
Ooh I do hope so!
I hope this is the beginning of the end. Like I said before until this story broke out, I was hoping we could be like Switzerland where they even brought the opening forward because they had made excellent progress but now I think we’ll end up like Italy where the regions and local government have pretty much ignored the diktat from central government.
I think there’s a good chance you are right and I totally agree with your assessment of the dynamics of the whole business. PM spouting nonsense like “about to be incapacitated with the virus” – what an own goal.
Walk just before dinner tonight in my town, lots of groups out and about, no cops. We still need to crack the institutions though – schools, big business and other public organisations obsessed with box ticking.
And also HSE – a lot of what will drive businesses under will be the insistence on risk assessments, social distancing and PPE. I saw a photo of two staff from Fortnum & Mason wearing both visor and face mask – talk about overkill and being a barrier to good customer service. Even if the lockdown is lifted that sort of thing would put me off going to shops, restuarant and museums.
Early doors this morning there was a council worker on the common putting fresh tape on the monkey bars that are part of the exercise trail. Meantime the bins everywhere were overflowing with the rubbish created by probably illegal picnics. Good to see my council tax money being well spent. The astroturf football pitches are locked up, so people play football on the common next to them…
The tapes didn’t work in my local park so they’ve put up a barrier around the exercise area but according to my husband many of those who want to use it climb over the barriers anyway. We’ve had less problem with litter now after some of us complained to the local council but the amount of discarded masks and gloves around is disgusting.
Here they keep taping off the skate park but the kids just go in anyway.
They taped off a path because a tree branch broke off. Amazingly the following day tree surgeons came in and cut it down. Good to see some people still working, farmers and agricultural contractors never stopped and some gardeners and even window cleaners have been out.
And my window cleaner was happy to accept cash 😉
Discouraging exercise is a great way to increase future burden on your NHS…
It is all just as confusing as the engineering and safety standards I used to have to deal with.. The links from section to section and from document to document obfuscate and confuse, glad I got out!
My favourite loophole so far is that in The Health Protection (Coronavirus,Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 it says ‘…a reasonable excuse includes the need to avoid injury or illness…’, doesn’t specify physical or mental. I’m sure I could argue staying inside will / has cause(d) mental illness, risky ground I know as there are some sneaky changes to mental health law.
What benefits Poppy?
I guess you could argue at a stretch that lockdowns do slow the spread just because there are fewer people moving around, but for that to work you would have to lock down while the virus is at very low levels and that’s a very small time window which most countries missed. The problem with that countries that do get it ‘right’ with lockdowns is that they are then shut off from the rest of the world, like NZ.
I don’t personally believe there are benefits but I was mainly playing Devil’s advocate.
Sweden update: Sweden being the key to the whole lockdown puzzle, it still deserves steady attention for, among other reasons, the data there is no longer theoretical. By late May it is actual/observed, and pointing towards the end and thereby allows us to see the outlines of the full/observed epidemic in a Western “stay open” (no lockdown) scenario. That insight is not new, but the newest data is new shows the picture clearly. In the series of graphs I have been making over the past month, I believe the course of the epidemic show the progress clearly and more importantly show an idea of how wrong the pro-Panic side was in March. Here are the newest ones, pegged to their big Friday May 22 update: The epidemic curves are all proceeding downwards towards completion (i.e., the end of the epidemic).In theSweden Deaths and ICU-intakes curve graphed together, plenty of lag time allowed meaning distortion of right side of the heavy line, while modest, is probably not driving the visible decline. Declines have been noted in total current-ICU-patient stock for weeks now, as well. The lesson? Stay-Open Sweden set to lose 0.02% of population to Wuhan Coronavirus, which won’t be much… Read more »
If you are the Hail who contributes so informatively to iSteve, great to see you here! (Great anyway, thanks for the post.)
Yes. Sweden, which did not shut down has half the death rate of Scotland. I am still waiting for Wee Burney to explain that.
HOW TO END THE LOCKDOWN Boris can make a speech tomorrow something like this….. My fellow citizens, umm, I forgot to mention earlier that all the money we have paid to those of you who have stayed home and not worked for the past few months is actually a personal loan and it must be paid back in full with interest. I am sure you will understand. We are a conservative government and we believe in your personal responsibility. We will in the meantime hold a mortgage over the deeds of your property as security. Of course, as always, there will be exemptions to this, e.g. members of the house of lords, all members of the aristocracy, billionaires, members of parliament and their aides. This is only fair when one considers the sacrifices they are making. To those of you who have been out working fearlessly throughout this period, e.g. supermarket workers, petrol pump attendants, NHS staff, transport workers, along with other essential service providers, we appreciate your efforts and will reward you by not charging you any taxes for the rest of your lives. I believe you will all understand that it would be extremely unfair for those who… Read more »
This is being done to stop the movement of people around the world. The evil bastards that rule over us with absolutely no problem whatsoever have decided that no one is allowed to travel, visit friends, relatives, pubs, gigs, sports etc for ever. This is war. It’s the latest plan these evil bastards that rule over us with absolutely no problem whatsoever have in store for us. If anyone is in any doubt as to what is going to happen in the future look to right now. This is never going away. The evil bastards that rule over us with absolutely no problem whatsoever are going to send the army on the streets and start killing objectors. Anyone who has posted on this site will be at the top of a watch list. One of the evil murdering scum that rule over us all with absolutely no problem whatsoever will be reading this, i don’t care though because any day is good enough to die for me. It’s no leap of fancy to suggest that this is what they have in mind for us. We are all to be monitored by machines, we’ve to be injected with DNA bio chemicals… Read more »
But will you take the vaccine?
No. Assuming there will be any vaccine, that is.
No, i’m banking my diet of tea, tobacco and greek yogurt will do
I’m more optimistic. Violent attempts to shut people down, to marginalise and discredit, to suppress are all signs of panic…indicating that something is going very wrong at the top…that people are waking up….everything is being exposed…because secrets can’t hide under a rock forever. Time’s up.
Let’s hope there will be a shift of consciousness eventually; that people finally wake up to how corrupt the establishment is, in all its guises.
Let’s hope that the future, the so-called ‘new normal’ doesn’t mean dystopia, totalitarianism and a police state, but that it means instead that we have truth and transparency which in turn leads to trust and open dialogue.
the people aren’t waking up, they’re all dumb all over and ugly on the side to quote Frank Zappa. I have no faith whatsoever in the vast majority of people. Everywhere you look you’ve got the people who are acting like they’re on holiday. They’re sitting around in their gardens drinking and eating and enjoying themselves. I was listening to the radio at work and this footballer came on to tell me how he’s glad to be at home and how he’s doing things with his son he wouldn’t have done and it’s, now this makes me puke, “making memories”. There are no secrets, we know the earth is being poisoned by fat lazy people buying shit they don’t need with money they aint got flown in from a chinese death camp and sold to them in exchange for conformity and instant gratification. The people are worthless consumers living in regulated houses with no land and no way to support themselves. The theme park we’ve been living in is closing down. Get used to it because this is only the beginning. More authoritarian government will be forcing trackers on you, you’ll be getting visits from the secret police telling you… Read more »
Are you not in a good mood today Biker?
No i’m good, been for a good ride on the bike away up the hills. Up through the forrest and no Land Workers to chase me. Today was a good day. All the stuff in my post is what i see and the fact it’s been down voted shows me that people just aren’t taking seriously the game is over. We’re not going back to normal. They’re not gonna let us.
Biker, I have enjoyed every one of your posts on this site including this one so I am going to give you a thumbs up. I can see you are having a bad day and you are not alone, in fact we are all getting closer to the limit of our patience and stability the longer this goes on. We can, though, look on the positive side. It is possible that we can make ‘the new normal’ better than the old one. Of course, I do not mean losing our freedoms, travel, social interaction, culture, pubs, music and concerts and all the things that make us human. All of this will come back but it may need a bit of fighting on our side and I can see you have the spunk. The new normal could be that we repair the injustices that have damaged our societies over the last few decades; The extreme disparity between rich and poor individuals. Should we accept that one person can have wealth which is higher than the GDP of about half the countries in the world? I dont think so. The vast corporate wealth and power which has turned the life of ordinary… Read more »
Back in the 80’s i read Ayn Rand, Murry Rothbard, Adam Smith amongst others and realised despite there being a blue print for a decent society we were never gonna achieve that. So i made sure i’d make enough money as quick as i could then i’d drop out of the whole game and become John Galt living a simple life woking a job anyone could do. I didn’t make as much money as i could buy a valley and live there but enough not to give a shit. That was my mistake because i didn’t foresee the interest coming and their ability to control us in every aspect of life. We can’t escape. We are prisoner is a giant labour camp policed by ourselves and the vast majority are super happy about that. They don’t care about anything apart from their next hit of whatever it is they like and the idea, even the knowledge of a free unregulated life, isn’t in their minds. For your level playing field Adam Smith had it about as flat as you can get it and still it hasn’t worked out that way. The do-gooders are forcing their will on us and won’t… Read more »
Agree BobT, It’s abundantly clear that this insanity is not about a killer virus. The question now is, what are we going to do about it. The dystopia they have plannes is not inevitable.
If people haven’t gone out and protested about their loss of liberty then I don’t hold out much hope.
George Carlin explains it very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo
Tried reading the Phillip Ball article. I didn’t get very far. It’s SO badly written. Why are pieces by plonkers like him always like that?
just noticed that the Toby Young wikipedia page now states “Young’s view contrasts with scientific recommendations for lockdown policy in the UK.[96]” referencing to this Phillip Ball artricle. Surely this is misinformation and misuse of the word “scientific”
Wikipedia has the same controlled bias. The only misinformation is the ‘official’ story that is peddled by fact checkers, Wikipedia, Snopes etc
Yes, same for me. I got a few paragraphs in, felt myself sinking into a mire of meaninglessness, and gave up. I admire the perseverance, or at least the pain threshold, of anyone who can actually read this to the end. Let alone garner some actual meaning from it.
I wouldn’t mind reading some up-to-date pro-lockdown arguments, but this one is impossible – even if it is a pro-lockdown argument, which I’m not sure, and now don’t care. The only thing that is clear is that the author thinks that he is very, very clever.
If Toby is sifting this sort of guff no wonder his nine hours a day slips away, and he’s worried that he might become another covid-19 fatality.
Just tried to read it too. The usual pompous garbage designed to discredit anyone who counters the ‘official’ narrative.
There’s a lady on the Unherd podcast who puts forward a case. A bad case, but I’d still call it a case 😉
Been for a drive into Lincoln today, being a bank holiday weekend and decent weather, ordinarily the “uphill” area would be alive with visitors & locals alike enjoying the bars, cafes & other touristy places like the ice cream parlour. Not forgetting the cable & cathedral. Instead everything is closed and sadly a few shops appear to have removed stock and possibly fixings also, so they may not be planning to reopen. One shop had a sign up saying they were closed but would review the situation in a few days time, the notice I suspect was posted at the start of lockup. On a very slightly better note a shop which I believe ordinarily sells tourist gifts now offers essential food items, such as eggs, milk, flour, etc. even local asparagus! Thus allowing them open because they sell essentials. As for the few people we came ‘close’ to they all swerved out of our path, not that we were blocking the path, and we politely walked toward one edge. to allow them as much room as we could without us deviating off the footpath. Was hoping to get into a conversation, just to see what peoples opinions are, but… Read more »
Fuck Cummings Bojo lockdown and the rest of the spineless twats they should be up against a wall
Like our host I am too much on the wine of late.. so forgive me.. One bottle of meaty red already and I’m just getting started – that does include the gravy for tonight’s meal though : ) Only the finest here. Stick that in your health drive crack-pipe BoJo. I am astonished at how BoJo clown is supporting his mate. I have no strong view on the Cummings affair, I think strictly speaking what he did was correct but I guess we need to get rid of the lockdown cuck-master in chief, So be it. Let’t get behind Baker. As a few commentators also noted, one of the last tweets on the Mason Mills account was a jab at the 1922 committee. Probably best not mess with them… Interesting that Cummings is apparently very concerned about a second wave based on the Spanish flu pandemic – one suspects that the scientific advice is being cherry picked to support that entrenched view… I have followed the law on these matters, even when my ‘instincts’ as a scientist told me this was Piers Moron appeasing horse manure. I have had enough. I have really had enough of this. Someone really needs… Read more »
Cummings doesn’t understand maths and science and so fetishizes them and those he believes do understand. I thought there would be trouble when he started looking for ‘weirdos’. Being ‘on the spectrum’ is a bug that we who do have some understanding have to endure. It is not a feature. I remain a Cummings supporter because he afflicts the comfortable.
Cummings comes across as a pretty thick angry 17 year old. But because he’s surrounded by the even thicker likes of Raab, Patel, Hancock and Johnson he doesn’t realise it. Or maybe that’s all part of his 4d chess game (what a cock!).
Embarrassing that anyone would consider him a genius.
Cummings is not stupid at all…. Remember he was one of the architects of Brexit vote leave. And that worked didn’t it? When nobody gave it a chance at the start.
Something definitely is afoot here…
Friends, we must be alert. Britain needs lerts. Here is an Awful Warning about the current pandemic: Covhysteria: your questions answered. Q. How will I know if I have contracted Covhysteria? Ans. If you need to ask, you almost certainly have it already. Q. What is Covhysteria? Ans. Covhysteria is a devastating disease that attacks both brain and body. It is fiercely infectious and can be transmitted by any medium of communication. It is believed that currently, about 96% of the population of Britain is suffering from Covhysteria. The rest will are almost certain to follow. Q. What are the symptoms? Ans. You will develop any, or more probably all, of the following physical symptoms: – pronounced yellowing of the skin – double incontinence – weakness in the legs – uncontrollable trembling – obstruction of the nasal and buccal passages owing to the eruption of a mask-like crust over the lower part of the face. And all of the following psychic symptoms: – limitless credulity – acute agoraphobia – a morbid fear of other people – watching BBC Deathporn – compulsive hand-sanitising – compulsive corpse-counting – a compulsion to place feet on little blue markers – reading The Guardian –… Read more »
Brilliant stuff. Thank you.
Quite a few of the intelligent and educated also fell into the vortex, of course. By contrast, a lot of “non-intelligent/educated” ended up getting it right (maybe for the wrong reasons in many cases).
Something else is going on here. See:
Is Corona a Religious Cult?
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/against-the-corona-panic-part-xii-an-anthropological-study-into-the-corona-cult-pro-panic-hardliners-and-the-media-succeeded-in-erecting-a-virus-centered-apocalypse-cult-as-state-religion-and-in/
Brilliant…. Fortunately i appear to be in the immune category although
1 : In am not educated ( 1980s state comprehensive school to thank for that ) and
2 : I am not Swedish
😉
I forgive you for that, my child, go in peace.
Thank you for the blessing fellow non believer
‘Tanzanian’ needs adding 😉
Very good : brought a wry smile to my face, even as I realised it was the literal truth.
Spot on. This should be a Public Health Announcement
I know lots of intelligent people who consider themselves “engaged” in politics who have spent almost no time researching for themselves any aspect of this crisis from what other countries are doing, to current and past death statistics, to the contents of the Coronavirus Act etc etc. They get all their stuff from the BBC and their “progressive” outlets of choice. It has never occurred to them that we could have chosen a different path. As a friend of a friend once said, there are clever people who are thick (the people to whom I refer here) and there are thick people who are clever (at the risk of upsetting people let’s say a good example would be Trump, though he’s clearly not thick, just not slick.
I once shared a flat with someone who had a double first from Oxford (and never shut up about it), very whizzy, glamorous job, and possibly the stupidest person I’ve ever met, if she nipped out for a pint of milk, you worried for her. I’m also running into super bright people who have never once considered there might be another way, or have even bothered to go and look at any data, if you say anything even mildly sceptical, they look shocked.
Yes it beggars belief. I’m honestly of limited intelligence and initiative. What on earth is wrong with people? Maybe we’ve had it too good, for too long.
There is indeed a massive difference between IQ and intelligence. Intelligence, to me anyway, is 60% intellectual curiousity, 20% training, and 20% IQ.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
YES!
Two of the most intelligent people I knew barely had a couple of O levels between them. One was a very sharp company director, the other was an artist among many other things.
A quote I can’t attribute – education teaches you what questions NOT to ask. The failures become scientists.
Many people who call themselves scientists aren’t: they use their cleverness to devise experiments to “prove” what they already decided to believe, or what their sponsors require.
Maybe I should have written ‘sensible’ instead of ‘intelligent’. It’s true that the two don’t always go together.
Agree Bec. The sheer lack of curiosity about this farce that has robbed us our civil liberties really pisses me off.
Dominic Cummins has simply pointed out what many legal folk have been saying for weeks, make legislation in haste and repent at your leisure. No law made as quickly, and with such light scrutiny will ever be successful (Benn Act?), lockdown is over, don’t tell everybody as the roads are lovely and clear. Just ensure you have a good reason, Cummins is now case law? I’ve also been racking my brain, as tiny as it feels at the moment due to lockdown, on how we can pay for the lockdown costs in a way that will fall mainly on those who have caused it. My idea is a social media tax, every twitter/facebook/tiktok etc post is subject to a small instant tax payment, paid in full to the country in which the post originated, any reposting attracts a slightly smaller charge again paid to the country in which the reposter resides. There will be an instant 40-60% drop off in users but the Piers Morgan’s of the world won’t be able to stay off the tweets and we’ll soon break even, hopefully it will replace the tax lost from people stopping smoking. I’m just guessing that smoking will be the… Read more »
“… as 250 people die every day in the UK due to smoking related issues …”
Does this statistic come from the Imperial model ?
The reader who wrote in about not being able to get her daughter’s birth certificate has certainly got a long haul ahead of her. I wasn’t aware of the birth registration issue, but I do know about the passport problem. The Passport Offices are mostly open, but operating at a very much slower pace than normal because they only have skeleton staffing. The website is replete with exhortations not to send applications in other than for compassionate reasons but they are in fact processing standard renewals albeit at a very much slower pace than usual. Applications that require a face to face interview, like a first child passport, have all been suspended with no date yet for when they’ll be restarted. This includes applications already in progress before the lockdown. My grandson was born in Hanoi to his British parents in December. His passport application was filed in January but as soon as the lockdown commenced, the interview online with a UK passport office (which had to be held in a Visa Application Centre in Hanoi) was cancelled and there it remains. This was a factor in preventing them leaving Vietnam in late March. He is unlikely to get his… Read more »
My cousin’s daughter gave birth today, at midnight, she’s 22, first baby, they sent her home at 4am. Although having been told there was no postnatal care, she’ll now get a midwife home visit, as Post Natal Depression is off the charts apparently (which worries me since we’ve changed the mental health act, and now one idiot or vindictive doctor could lock you up and section you on his say so alone). Didn’t even occur to me to ask about the birth certificate.
THERE IS NO POST-NATAL CARE??
Thank you, so much,NHS, for saving lives.
No, but they’re keeping the nation’s spirits up with their “zany” YouTube dance routines.
No chance of assistance from the Embassy in Hanoi, Carausius ? British citizen stuck abroad without a passport etc.
Nil points again on Cummings Toby, if random member of the public had googled random-person-at-beauty-spot’s number plate, I’d agree with you, but he didn’t, he spotted one of the most important men in politics (God help us), the architect of Lockdown, including the Lockdown messaging, a man with a reputation for his pugnacious rejection of any kind of accountability, swanning about whilst simultaneously being the lynch pin for the Government doing this to us! I wouldn’t have googled him, I’d have called a news desk, and quite right too. You had loads of fun with Ferguson, and Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, and the Tory MP who drove to his second him, quite rightly, stop being a hypocrite about this just because you like the bloke (God knows why). I agree the left’s monstering of him is disingenuous, that doesn’t absolve him of clearly thinking it was good enough for people dying of cancer, but not good enough for him. I dislike state removal of my liberty, I really get the heebie jeebies when within a fortnight the grandees start rubbing our noses in their privileges, because rules are just for the plebs. All animals are equal, but some animals are… Read more »
*home, not him.
Have enjoyed reading your posts BecJT but not sure about your opening sentence here.
I posted yesterday regarding my scepticism of the Guardian’s report re the eyewitnesses.
As someone pointed out, typing a car registration into a computer ( unless it was a police computer) merely tells you the make, colour and whether it was taxed or not -no names or addresses. The retired teacher never did say what the result of his computer search told him.
I agree with your point about ‘phoning a news desk. So why didn’t he?
Not defending Cummings at all, but doubting the quality of Guardian journalism here.
Have you seen the video of the journalist who broke the story being interviewed by Marr? It’s on Guido.
“…typing a car registration into a computer ( unless it was a police computer) merely tells you the make, colour and whether it was taxed or not -no names or addresses.”
How do you know? 🙂
Because I’ve just typed my own in!
That chap didn’t know either – until he type Cummings’ registration in. And it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that maybe there was some nerd web site dedicated to famous people’s car number plates. There are stranger things on the web than that!
GDPR, that data isn’t public (can you imagine neighbourhood watch if it was, your neighbours would be insufferable!)
No I haven’t, and that may well be true, but Toby reported it as fact, and then implied this man was a member of the stasi, which isn’t exactly honorable journalism either. I read a piece in the spectator about it, but my loathing for Cummings is so immense, I just can’t bear to read any more. Whatever your views on Brexit, you only need to watch him giving evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee to know he has contempt (I mean real contempt) for our institutions, for democracy, for politics, and even for people who voted leave. He is a very dangerous man, and it makes me very nervous he has the influence he does.
I used to like the *idea* of a character like Cummings, but not after he has done this to us.
You only need to read the insane, grandiose, verbose, arrogance that is his blog to know the man is not right in the head and has a massive coke habit. He’s dangerous.
He is totally dangerous. And if anyone would instigate compulsory vaccination he would.
He thinks he knows everything, what’s best for everybody, and because he knows a bit more about science and maths than the average politician (which isn’t hard) that his total lack of any moral reasoning ability beyond naive utilitarianism and scientism is unassailable.
Shudder! Ugh, he makes my flesh creep from a distance.
Remember the institutions you list off have contempt for us.
I think he was claiming the search as evidence his story was true because it was in his browser history.
Well he’d also still have the reg number I guess, which would prove it was him, which is prob why the journalist asked, I’d guess. I notice, incidentally, that Hitchins is saying he should stay in post, as sacking him just shores up the argument for lockdown, and I’d agree if our side don’t get on the counter narrative pronto, which is why I’m a bit annoyed with how Toby is spinning this.
Have they proved it was Cumming’s car yet? I can’t understand why the eyewitness ( the one with a photographic memory!) didn’t just ask the Guardian journalist to check the registration number with her pals who are parked outside Cumming’s house all the time!
I’m guessing that’s precisely what’s happened.
But have the Guardian provided any proof that the registrations matched. Some posts on other sites are suggesting the “second visit” bit is being faded out by the media.
I need more evidence before I can pronounce guilt or not!
Agree completely. Comes to something when Rachel Shabi makes more sense than Brendan O’Neill (on Sky a few mins ago). A young woman committed suicide because she thought she would be breaking the lockdown to attend her blessed granny’s funeral. Toby needs to reflect on that!
I think Brendan (I tend not to agree with him, so don’t say this lightly) has made a lot of sense on lockdown, I thought his piece in the Spectator today lacked coherence, and I feel a boys club building up (you always get the measure of men as you watch them close ranks) and really am quite irritated by it. This lockdown, if you read the polling, is hitting the young, the poor, and mainly women, and the impoverished elderly. In my own extended circle, two deaths, one dead beloved pet (you are not allowed in at the vet when they euthanise them, so the poor mutt was scared and alone), financial carnage, one family friend had her breast cancer chemo and radiotherapy stopped, my dad’s accelerating dementia, our wrecked business. It REALLY matters to me that this pillock thought he was above all that.
Agree. It matters to many people. For what it’s worth, we are a household of 4 and I am the only woman. Three of us voted Brexit (the other being too young to vote). We all ordinarily agree with Brendan (and Toby, when he is on paper reviews etc, as well as this site, obviously). We all think Cummings has to go – and Boris too for that matter.
I’m honestly agnostic on Brexit, I was passionately remain, we lost the argument, the election was the end, it’s done. What I do not like is the contempt this man has for ordinary people, and for proper process. It doesn’t bother me that Leave won, it does bother me that he felt by any means necessary, fair or foul, was how we do things in this country. We don’t (well that wouldn’t be a country I wanted to live in at least). It’s good to hear his ‘natural’ supporters don’t support him. It’s a moral question, not a legal one, and not moral in a curtain twitching way, but in an absolutely fundamental way.
(PS contempt for ordinary people is what was the absolute end for me with labour and with remain, for full disclosure, it’s not ok whoever does it)
You are right, it is fundamental. There are ways to behave, and it is the basics of any decent society that its ‘leaders’ treat the public with respect, and uphold both the spirit and the letter of the law.
“ , it does bother me that he felt by any means necessary, fair or foul, was how we do things in this country.”
Oh come on. Remain pulled every dirty trick, had every advantage and continue to do so even today.
As for cumming he’s has every right to visits who the hell he wants. What is wrong is the hypocrisy of being at the Center of the nest who orchestrated this shit show one rule for them one for us.
I hope he stays as it will mean they have no leg to stand on and lockdown is officially over.
Suggest you listen to his own supporters on Leave, on this. Did you watch his parliamentary select committee performance? And that is precisely my point, I don’t care he broke lockdown (well I care he did it with symptoms, as medically the only thing that would have worked is voluntarily washing our hands, and staying at home if we, or a member of our household got sick), but that it shows he knows it’s bullsh*t.
That’s my take on it too – we were being bombarded with panic stories about this new plague and yet he took his possibly diseased child to be looked after by his elderly parents. I’m guessing he was given the heads up of the dangers of the disease while we were were all being scared witless (along with Ferguson and however many more MPs will turn out to have done the same). Maybe I’ve missed something about the timings of the reporting but if he was so confident of his actions why did the story not get released at the time? Obviously because the whole country would have moved around for ‘essential journeys’ . Loath Piers Morgan but am with him on this one.
It isn’t a boys’ club with Brendan. He’s just being totally consistent. It’s like the Jo Brand battery acid ‘joke’. He defended her right to make it even though she wouldn’t even defend his right to exist. (He was wrong, though: it wasn’t a joke).
That’s terribly sad. But who does that!
No one seems to be doubting that Cummings’ bout of ‘Covid’ was genuine, and that he really, really was scared about him and his missus both having it, etc. etc. There’s no proof: I don’t think any PCR tests took place.
I don’t see why his fears would be any more valid than a person driving up North because they were literally going suicidal stuck in a small flat in London. Or they were desperately worried about their parents who sounded scared on the phone or whatever. In fact, just about everyone could come up with ‘worries’ and could justify “following the instincts” of a father/mother/brother/sister/son/daughter/aunt/uncle/godparent/friend. And it would be perfectly “reasonable” for them to also visit a few local beauty spots in order to help settle their fears when they got there.
I totally agree, and I’d have no issue with people who did that, who am I to judge. I do have an issue with the man that was part of the removal of our civil liberties for no good reason, then taking the p*ss out of those people who were suffering. Plus, call me a cynic, all men think they are dying when they the get the bloody flu, even a heavy head cold has them lying in bed insisting its the end, whilst you ferry lemsips. 🙂
Cummings has a stunt double. Yes, that must be it.
That really made me laugh! It also made me nearly say a rude word! Bravo!
A lot of your posts have a real downer on men… boys clubs, man ‘flu & c. Your early posts about rebuilding your views from the ground up were interesting and engaging. A mind at work. Can I meekly suggest putting these beliefs about men to the same scrutiny applied to the others?
My views on men, I can assure you, are very well founded, it was a joke, men seem to take anything like that as a massive assault on their manhood. Ask any woman about man flu, see what they say. I promise you, sincerely, that I have a very coherent framework for what I think there. And ‘men’ as a sex, doesn’t mean ‘individual men I know and like’.
Aha! And how many of the weaker sex are suffering from Mancovid??
Would we have shut down the entire western economy if overweight middle aged women who’d eaten themselves into a state of diabetes were 70% of those dying? Asking for a friend obviously.
I agree – who drives all that way with a small child if they feel so terribly ill? No one seems to mention this, it’s all oh, he did it for the sake of his child! Sounds like a great big lie to me.
Then by inference he wouldn’t have been well enough to drive 260 miles.
I am not defending Cummings hypocrisy, but his major crime is contributing to current policy. Given that, I strongly believe we (we being those of us who think this policy needs to end, now) are better served by him remaining in place, as a constant reminder that the laws we have are absurd, unworkable, unnatural and unenforceable. The PM dug himself a deeper hole trying to defend it. Let them hang themselves.
I was out and about in a couple of different locations today, saw lots of groups of a few to more people, some young, some middle aged, with and without kids, clearly not from the same household, meeting up with mates for a playdate, picnic, day in the park. I am sure lots are doing it in their homes too. Seeing Cummings take the mickey and be defended by the PM and the Cabinet will just reinforce people’s growing realisation that the whole thing has got to stop.
Cummings should get some comeuppance, but he’s one of many and by no means the worst. The Government and opposition and devolved governments have been a disgrace. The Coronavirus Act was PASSED WITHOUT A VOTE – Commons and Lords.
I’m open to being persuaded by this argument, I just wish Toby would then make it rather than the one he did. I loathe the man, I truly do, but I want this lockdown to end at the soonest opportunity.
Well I don’t know if Mr Young reads these comments but if he does maybe he will reflect on this.
I actually had a bit of time for Cummings and the PM before the U-turn. They are off my Christmas card list now, forever.
Let them make themselves look sillier and sillier. That hubris may be their downfall. They are not as clever as they think they are.
I wish you well.
I don’t see how Cummings being around in the background is going to make much difference once this story has blown over. He’s not public-facing and just won’t be in the news. So he’s done most of the damage he’s going to do already.
Better to clear him out and get one of the architects of this mess out of any position where he can try to cover things up.
Or even more simply – he’s clearly a danger to good governance and the sooner he’s out, the sooner we won’t be having him coming up with imbecilities like the quarantine.
That’s what I’m thinking, would Johnson sacking him symbolically do us more good, or not? The man is a weasel, no doubt. I am not angry about any breaking of absurd lockdown (apart from not quarantining, whatever we think about lockdown, we can agree it’s dangerous to the elderly, common decency to stay at home if you are poorly, or live with someone who is poorly), I am angry at this man’s swaggering contempt.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 is not and Act of Parliament, it is a Statutory Instrument, hence no debate needed from what I understand. It has the word Act in it to mislead you. It is supplementary to the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 which is an Act of Parliament and sets out what disease is to be controlled which is as defined as: 1Meaning of “coronavirus” and related terminology (1)In this Act— “coronavirus” means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); “coronavirus disease” means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus). (2)A reference in this Act to infection or contamination, however expressed, is a reference to infection or contamination with coronavirus. (3)But a reference in this Act to persons infected by coronavirus, however expressed, does not (unless a contrary intention appears) include persons who have been infected but are clear of coronavirus (unless re-infected). One big problem, the virus has not yet been isolated to confirm it exists and no reliable test exists for it to say a person or premises is infected or contaminated as per the legislation so that due process as per the 2 pieces of legislation can be… Read more »
I think you are right BecJT. I think Toby is not seeing the significance here. It could be that those responsible for this inhumane policy may not entirely believe in it themselves! So obsessed with becoming the NHS party. I dont think they have any idea how much pain they have caused the “ordinary people”.
Dont care what happens to Cummings, but I hope whatever happens the government’s credibility is torn to shreds, and more people see what a complete mess they’ve made of things.
Yes, you’ve articulated it better than me, that’s precisely it. I hope their credibility is torn to shreds too. It is doing so much harm, not just economic hardship, but real human pain.
They’re probably friends through the Spectator
It’s worth bearing in mind that Cummings’ wife is an editor at the Spectator (something I wasn’t aware of until I read it in a newspaper story today, since I stopped reading the Spectator years ago).
It kind of puts some of these relationships in a clearer light and explains why it would be very awkward for someone like Toby to be giving Cummings a public shoeing. (I mean in the sense that they probably are friends and have quite a lot of social contact as couples and families, not that there’s any particular direct material interest in it.)
Someone posted yesterday that the time he was up in Durham coincided very neatly with his wife’s birthday. Since I don’t believe in coincidences….
I’m totally with you Bec. That’s all.
https://twitter.com/AsbaiBadr/status/1264572794681069581/photo/1
This is a nice graph from a Dutch calculation. I think this is an important graph. They are calculating the CFR for each 20 year band. Dark blue is inhabitants in Netherlands per 20 year age band. Brown is Covid-19 cases detected in each age band. Light blue is hospitalization of Covid-19 cases in each age group . The purple line I think is ICU care. Black is dead of Covid-19 (overleden=passed away but really confusing for me as it resembles survived in Swedish!).
Look at the CFR for all age group and you must be blind no to see that what has been done with lockdown and school closures have been a self- inflicted disaster.
Please the same type of table for all European countries.
Wow that’s a really good one. A great demonstration.
On my way home from a longer walk (went to a park where people were simply enjoying the sun and no masks in sight), I ran into a neighbour of mine who had just come home from walking her dog, we asked each other how we’re doing and she told me that she was fed up with the lockdown as her hip operation has been postponed/cancelled. She’s been in pain most days but stoically still gets on with her life and keeping fit. I am angry that this is still going on when people like my neighbour are left to suffer because society has been behaving as if no other health conditions exist. Its ridiculous!
I agree. I am just waiting for the first person to sue the NHS because needlessly cancelling their treatment has resulted in injury.
I am due to have my smear test next month but it’s all been postponed. Pretty sure it can be done whilst staying 1m away from my face, but perhaps I might be spreading covid from cervix, who knows. Was told by Trust that it didn’t matter anyway as even if the cells were abnormal I wouldn’t be treated at the moment anyway. Great thanks.
Be quiet, you insolent person, don’t you realise that by not testing you they are saving lives?
Now get out there and clap them, before somebody notices you aren’t doing it and throws a brick through your window.
https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1264635224878723075/photo/1
This graph describes that the herd immunity could be about 20%. In the Stockholm data you can see that the peak of infection was reached in the middle of April. Blood samples taken late April indicated antibody level of 7 % but it takes 3 weeks to develop antibodies and the State Epidemiologist estimated the true level of antibodies around 20% in the end of April. There is a clear decline in May in Stockholm. Warmer weather can’t be an explanation as the rest of Sweden is not yet declining.
One more indication that the true herd immunity is more likely at that level instead of 60%, a level peddled by the influenza fixated epidemiologists which have created such havoc with their calculations.
Six months ago I’d have said that Corbyn left the Labour party and peoples belief in the Labour party at such a low point that it would take 20 years for the public to forgive and forget.
Now I’d say that Starmer will get a quite comfortable majority.
And that majority will only get larger and larger as the full horror of what these imbeciles have done gets peeled away over the next 3 years.
Historians will look back at this with bemused disbelief.
It’s funny, I think if the One Nation Tories get a grip, Labour won’t see power for twenty years, poverty hasn’t hit yet, they’re going to have a hell of a job to explain campaigning for poverty when the full light of day is shone on the data. It was evident from the start this was lunacy, and never once did they say ‘are you sure? This is a brutal policy, are you really sure?’
Depends where the Tory votes go. I still can’t believe so many people voted Tory after three years of May. I’m hoping this will be enough to persuade Tory voters en masse to vote elsewhere. By which I mean for Nigel. After all of this if people still vote for the three main parties then what hope do we have?
You mean Nigel Farage? Why would he still be in politics if Brexit is done? (I mean, it might not be, but if that’s the case the whole table is overturned and we’re probably in civil disorder territory).
If Farage was going to be a meaningful figure post-Brexit he’d have had to make a stand against the lockdown and he failed at that. What use is he now, after that failure?
Who knows what the big issues will be anyway, after four years of trying to reshape our economy to recover from the damage done in the past two months??
People didn’t vote Tory after three years of May. They voted Tory after 20 years of being ignored by Labour.
Exactly this. I’m currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s history of the Thatcher years, just got to the bit where she secures the rebate for the UK, after the three year deal to give back ‘some of our own money’. Much to the horror of Schmidt and d’Estaing. I confess I was ignorant of the history, but during the eighties, Labour was passionately Leave, and actually campaigned in a couple of elections that if elected the first thing they’d do is leave the EEC. Thatcher on the other hand, whilst making a stink about costs, and our standing in the club, held the line that the only people who would benefit were the Russians. I was a kid during her early years, so vaguely remember some of the key players, and then as discussed, at university, the only acceptable view was an unqualified hatred of Maggie. I didn’t know that in fact the roles had reversed with Labour and Tory on the EU. Plus she’s blamed for the growth of anti european sentiment, but from what I’m reading, it was pretty well established, particularly in the working classes before she took office.
Back in the days when the welfare of the indigenous working classes was a priority for Labour (because the unions were the main powerbase), ahead of dogmatic internationalism and Blairite selling them out to buy big business support, I remember the Labour movement generally regarded the EEC as an employer’s conspiracy.
The EEC that Thatcher defended was a very different beast from the later EU, and Thatcher never supported Maastricht, let alone Lisbon. Those created new institutions that we were never given a vote on joining.
For sure Bec! Corbyn is a massive euro sceptic himself, always has been. He couldn’t have been more obvious about it really as his “campaigning” to remain was so patently lacklustre.
No way to forecast at this stage. A week is a long time in politics, we’ve got four years to go.
First, the lockdown could go either way depending on whether the guilty parties (and I include in that all the scientists and media people who’ve enabled it), are able to cover up how unnecessary and how damaging it was. Second, it depends on how the “Conservative” Party handles succession, who takes over from Johnson and how. Third it depends how the economy goes after we stop savaging it.
Starmer’s a Blairite. There are still plenty of Labour supporters and former Labour supporters who won’t want to see that again.
Finally, a lot depends on what alternative parties arise that could take votes from either Labourites who don’t like Blairism or Tories who don’t forgive the lockdown.
And finally, Brexit could flair up again as an issue, if there’s an attempt to derail it.
Starmer’s biggest obstacle is still his time spearheading ‘The People’s Vote’ or whatever bullcrap that was. (Who voted in the referendum? Aliens?)
People should look to Wales to see what a Labour lockdown is like.
Twice as brutal as the English one, and yet Wales has twice the English death rate.
As they say, do the math.Not that anyone in Drakeford’s gang is capable of that.
Wales has twice the English death rate? Wow, I find that hard to believe
North-west Wales, my home area, is rather remote and has seen a lot of tension between tourists and locals in this crisis that are not completely related to the current crisis. The overall demographic is somewhat elderly as younger people tend to leave. The south Wales valleys suffer from significant health problems such as mining related lung disorders and general obesity, which explains their poor outcomes with the ‘rona….
True. Rural Wales is little affected. The trouble is concentrated in old-industrial hotspots, but the whole population is still jailed and the whole economy still being killed deader than dead.
According to the DT, the Welsh ‘government’ sent out thousands of letters in (not until!!??) April, telling vulnerable people to dig a particularly deep bunker, but the letters were sent to the wrong addresses.
And then the govt did exactly the same thing AGAIN.
The Rhondda, the worst area in the whole UK, was if
of course the area most militantly opposed to the closure of the coal mines. ‘Arthur Scargill, we are with you ever more.’
And they are. To the death. No metaphor this time,
Armageddon wouldn’t induce me to vote for the Labour party, not unless it is reborn as something completely different with completely different people in it and probably not even then.
I hope not, he’s just another establishment muppet. Different side of these are coin.
Daily Telegraph: “Police say Dominic Cummings controversy will make lockdown impossible to enforce. Senior figures fear that lockdown policing is ‘dead in the water’ and that the public will rely on the ‘Cummings defence’ when challenged.”
We can but hope!
Excellent news. Although in my part of the world Plod has already retreated back to the station. It must be hard for them with Greggs and MacDonalds shut.
Why not just disrespect the whole of the police? By the way, it’s McDonald’s.
They never really bothered down my way. I saw them warily look at a group of teenagers once, and then hot tail it in the opposite direction…
Never had much problems with the police here and this despite the fact that we have a large presence due to the Police academy being based in my area and a district HQ. But agree its all purely academic now this is another nail in the coffin after senior figures a few weeks’ ago had already admitted that the new guidelines are hard to enforce.
It does make me laugh that people on here are so anti-police. They’re just doing their jobs and getting on with life. I think if people spoke to any of them they’d realise that they’re all massive lockdown sceptics! None of them have ever bothered with ppe or social distancing, and they desperately want their kids to go back to school and to be able to see their families etc
All the ones I’ve talked to and seen talking on footage have been as right on and “concerned” about the “dangers” of this jumped up flu as any lockdown zealot. And if they didn’t want to become hated by a whole new group of people then they should have responded to all the lockdown snitch calls with their usual response to reports of a car theft or break in: “I’m sorry we don’t have the manpower available to respond right now. Well get back to you as soon as possible.”
The good news today was year 10 and 12s can go back to school on June15th and we are no one step lower on the Nando’s scale. Yay. But seriously I think the government is feeling the heat from backbenchers now. On Andrew Marr today they had the AstraZeneca spokesman explain how there new “vaccine” was being produced and in mid trials now. They are in a race to see if the trial can indicate the effectiveness BEFORE there are too few infections due to lockdown to properly find exposure. Hmm so there isn’t enough disease out there for the wondervaccine to get trialed? Which begs the question, why bother? Then we are told in a trial with “Rebus” (Marr Sic) monkeys the monies didn’t exhibit symptoms BUT did have the Coronavirus in nose swabs….I’d love to know how you find out if a monkey has lost its sense of smell or has a headache but at least they were asymptotic. But hold on, they have the virus in their sinuses. So you have infected the monkey with Coronavirus itself not a similar virus to train the body to produce antibodies? So this brilliant “vaccine “ infects you, MIGHT stop… Read more »
How dumb?
You know the answer to that one.
He kept reiterating the point that the outbreak is evaporating. Maybe he’s a sceptic too and we should be cheering his efforts to sneak that info into a BBC propaganda programme.
On the other hand, the twit from the Royal Society, had me shouting at the tv more loudly than ever, as he waxed lyrical about the effectiveness of masks, with no convincing evidence other than dismissive waves of the hand.
Guys I just spoke to one of my best friends who now lives in London, and finally, FINALLY!, I found someone I know who thinks the lockdown is as bullshit as we do. Hurrah! This is an intelligent and ballsy woman who works in magazines, a Northerner – but given her love of the champagne socialista lifestyle that she lives, I thought she’d be more of a lockdown accepter.
But no. She hates it. She says she is doing more work for less money (they have cut her wages by 10% but she is still working from home), and all the advantages of having just bought a flat in sort-of-central (zone 2) London are now gone as all the nice places she moved there for are closed.
She is reguarly breaking lockdown rules by meeting multiple friends from multiple households in parks around central London.
Hopefully, she is representative of a lot of professional people in big cities – maybe the silent majority? Those who aren’t on Twatter or Facefuck throwing their weight around, or answering polls on landline phones?
Back in the good old pre-covid days a Zone 2 flat would be manna from heaven – I would have loved that compared to my Thames Valley hovel! Let’s hope it returns otherwise the UK is finished. The engine room is dead and the captain is nowhere to be seen…
Oh and I discovered one of my PhD students at a certain London university is ignoring lockdown and she lives in Zone 1……
I live in zone 4 which is piss poor in terms of parks and places to go to escape the lockdown. If I had the money I would move to zone 2 in a hearbeat.
I think anyone who has ever lived in London must know that this social distancing thing is complete bs. I lived in zone 2 for 12 years and you wouldn’t be able to leave the flat ever if you adhered to it.
It seems #BooforBoris is now pencilled in for 8pm on Tuesday
https://twitter.com/MATTxLAW/status/1264642771664732170
Somebody makes a great comment underneath it:
One of the worst things about all this is that the govt is trying to insinuate that a) we somehow all “misunderstood” the lockdown guidance and b) if we’d only CARED enough about our families, we’d have travelled to them anyway
I do actually think that is what they are suggesting. Just think about it. The rules and guidance are the leakiest of leaky buckets… They are not stupid, they know that.
It is down to the people to choose.
We are being manipulated and it’s all a game.
Boris Johnson failed to close down Cummings story No surprise that the BBC’s willingness to lie for the government, amply demonstrated over the past few months, stops when it comes to letting them get away with protecting someone who is very much “not one of us” as far as the establishment lefty media classes are concerned. “If Boris Johnson’s decision to appear at Sunday’s press conference was an attempt to close down the story about Dominic Cummings’ behaviour during the lockdown by handling it himself, it failed completely. … A small troop of Tory MPs have already said publicly that Mr Cummings broke the rules and should quit, and a few more have gone public since the prime minister spoke, alongside some of the government’s scientific advisers. Several ministers are saying it privately too, who feel deeply uncomfortable with what has happened and Mr Johnson’s justification of it. And many of the public may feel, it is quite something to watch the prime minister seemingly reinterpret the same public health advice he has credited with saving thousands of lives, to protect one of his team. ” This situation is shaping up towards perhaps the best possible outcome for sceptics: 1… Read more »
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1264656023437991937/photo/1
“the smoothed version makes this very clear as well. it really looks a lot like no matter what you do on lockdown, you get the same basic curve. you can lock down 7% or 75%, you get the same rates of change and there is no correlation on lockdown and curve flattening”.
This compares 4 countries with different approach. The most extreme country with lockdown Spain,then little softer UK , the “lite” lockdown of Netherlands and no lockdown Sweden. Lockdown was supposed to save lives? No sign of that in the curves. the actual rate of Covid-19 deaths at which it grew and declined is basically identical.
We all know that here, but the zombies are utterly convinced that the l.d. ( I get violent nausea if I try to type the full word) is all that stands between them and instant death, As has been pointed out many times, they are utterly immune to reason.
The thing with Cummings is that he’s probably one of the few that can shake up the grossly incompetent monolith that we call our Civil Service.
Most of the embarrassing cock ups that make the UK look like idiots on the world stage are probably largely due to them, such as the PPE shortage, pandemic unreadiness, Windrush, sending EU residents their marching orders, sending C 19 discharges to care homes etc etc.
Ministers constantly have egg on their faces but the teams below them are the footsoldiers. Not saying the top people aren’t responsible, but there is so much dead wood below them they could ignite a forest that would burn for decades.
So lockdown rule breaker or not, I’d keep him on. Nobody else has the balls to clear up the mess, and he has just started.
However if he’s behind this lockdown cockup, then I agree, it’s time for him to go.
“Most of the embarrassing cock ups that make the UK look like idiots on the world stage are probably largely due to them, such as the PPE shortage, pandemic unreadiness, Windrush, sending EU residents their marching orders, sending C 19 discharges to care homes etc etc.”
All of those pale into irrelevant insignificance next to the colossal incompetence represented by the panic decision in the week before March 23rd.
Seriously, how could a man responsible for that monumental, criminal idiocy have the brass balls to ever accuse anyone in government of incompetence, ever again?
“However if he’s behind this lockdown cockup, then I agree, it’s time for him to go.”
Is there any reason to suppose he isn’t? It seems to have been generally assumed that was the case, before this all blew up. What’s more, it was said that the ridiculous quarantine nonsense was his idea too – evidence that his incompetence in government wasn’t finished after March 23rd.
How many chances do you want to give him to prove his dangerous ineptitude in government, at our expense?
None of this makes any sense, I agree. Cummings is highly intelligent, which isn’t that common in government. But if he is indeed behind this madness (we don’t know for sure) then I agree, he should go – and I retract what I said: it’s not intelligence, it’s zealotry, and that’s dangerous.
Does anyone have any idea if Cummings has any (professional or otherwise) links to Imperial/Gavi/WHO/Gates Foundation etc.
I say this because everyone else in the decision making frame seems to and has therefore way more of a ‘motive’ to hype up a vaccine and push for a lockdown. So even if Cummings had a hard-on for lockdown, the other people involved in the process definitely had no reason to reign him in, did they?
In other words: there’s no way Cummings was single-handedly responsible for anything. There’s no way ANY of them were single-handedly responsible for anything. What we have is a perfect storm of short-sighted, self-interested incompetence on the part of multiple individual actors, who all came together in a kind of diabolical collective delusion. It’s kind of remarkable. And even more remarkable that a similar process seems to have happened in many countries. (I’m currently reading the German leak. It’s unbelievable how similar the cock up unfolded there as to how it did over here).
For me the suggestion that he probably thought he was being clever by keeping the government onside with public opinion and protecting it from any accusations of risking or damaging the NHS is pretty plausible.
It’s exactly the kind of incompetence you’d expect from an intelligent man focused on the wrong things, and lacking wisdom, perspective or humility.
Remember, up until the panic we were on track to go the rational Swedish route, not the continental route, and David Starkey made a good case that it was political fear of bad NHS publicity that spooked the Johnson regime.
True, true. I can imagine him in Boris’s ear after attending SAGE meetings. I can imagine him doing a “I told you so” type intervention when the Imperial model was presented to Boris.
He was overheard at a party in late winter saying the plan was ‘herd immunity, and if a few grannies die, so be it’. And the rage inducing thing, given 11m carried on going to work, and then going home and mixing with their families (let’s say another 20m), and then we all went to the supermarket, is it was the leakiest lockdown. Plus the cynical but unnecessary focus on the NHS, then meant the saintly NHS then booted out all the grannies into carehomes, and caused the wholesale destruction of our old (that’s not a mistake, that’s contempt), including from non covid diseases.
I am fuming, because they clearly KNEW it was nonsense, but it was hugely popular. However, this way has wreaked devastation on those least able to withstand it, wrecked the economy, failed to shield the vulnerable, will kill innocent people wholesale for years to come, has damaged our institutions, removed our liberty. Here we are destroyed, and we still got ‘herd immunity and dead grannies’.
The man should be exiled.
But that doesn’t explain why most of the rest of the world did the same. I think there’s much more to this.
He has connections to the company that got £250m for the track and trace App.
Here is Andrew Lawrence’s take on it….very funny!
https://twitter.com/andrewlawrence/status/1264848656118792192?s=20
This man is not your friend, he has utter contempt for you. And he hasn’t got clever ideas, he’s a sociopath.
Civil service, Police, unions and councils infested with common purpose graduates for a long time now.
It looks like he was behind it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/top-aide-to-u-k-s-johnson-pushed-scientists-to-back-lockdown Many other links to the same story.
There is nothing good to say for this man’s behaviour now or in the past but I want to believe that the timing of this story (after all it took place 2 months ago) may be significant in terms of changing people’s attitude to observing lockdown rules and advice.
Seems pretty damning I agree. Hard to know what to believe any more.
I would like to ask everyone here if there was a public enquiry into the lockdown, what questions would you like to ask.
Prime Minister, you cited Neil Ferguson’s report prior to the U-turn that led to the lockdown, and you appointed him to the SAGE committee. Can you tell us which of Neil’s past achievements had most impressed you?
What I’d really like to ask him:
Prime Minister, what does it feel like to wake up every day and remember that by the time you’ve gone to bed you’ll have blown another £2.5 billion of the country’s money on covering up your mistake?
To take a big decision such as the one to put the entire country into lockdown, it is necessary to weigh costs against benefits. What steps were taken to assess the likely costs of the lockdown to the economy, to health, social and mental care, and in general social and cultural terms. What steps were taken to assess the benefits of lockdown in terms of reducing disease impact, beyond relying on modelling that was known to be inherently unreliable as a predictor? And how were the two weighed against each other to reach the decision?
Yes – that would be my question (better phrased by you, though!).
The enquiry will not happen until about 2022 so my question would be,
Prime Minister, two years ago you locked down our citizens and businesses because of a virus that killed 35,000 people or about the same number as a normal influenza outbreak and also because you said you wanted to save the NHS.
This year, we have recorded 800,000 people who have died of starvation, a further 500,000 who have died from lack of health care because the NHS has no funds and cannot pay the doctors and nurses and at least 50,000 who have committed suicide.
Do you still think that your 2020 decision was correct?
At this rate we will still be in lock down in two years time and ~30% of those deaths will have covid on the death certificate ‘proving’ lock down was necessary.
Prime Sinister, do you think that human rights are at all important?
( No typo.)
The decisions you made were based on a theoretical death toll vs likely collateral damage.
Do you maintain that you had no choice in the steps you took?
What were the measures considered to mitigate the collateral damage?
If we had known then what we know now would you have done things differently?
Would you do the same in future?
Prime Minister. You once wrote these words: “If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it. If I am incapable of consuming it whole, I will masticate the card to the point of illegibility. And if that fails, or if my teeth break with the effort, I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned. ” Do you still stand by that principle? Do you accept that under your instruction, in fact, innocent ‘freeborn Englishmen’ have been asked to do more than simply confirm their identity? That they have also been asked for their “excuse” for being outside their home and breathing ‘God’s fresh air’? And that if they refused to comply they have been treated as… Read more »
“I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned”
Good grief taking out a penknife in front of an enforcement officer? That’s likely to get him tasered right there!
Anyway possession of a penknife will surely be an offence in itself soon.
Prime Minister. In imposing the temporary measures that came to be known as the ‘lockdown’ you made it clear that the aim was to ‘flatten the curve’ and ‘protect the NHS’. A few weeks later, it was apparent that the curve was sufficiently flat, and the NHS had been more than capable of dealing with the epidemic. Yet you persisted with the lockdown long after this, causing irreversible damage to the economy, inevitably causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people, denying the population their liberty, and plunging the country into the largest crisis in its history. Why did you do this?
That’s the one!
Prime Minister. You and your ministers have frequently claimed to be “following the science” or “being led by the science”.
Could you give us your definition of the word “science” and a brief description of how, in your opinion, science works? What does the term “The Science” mean?
Can you describe your scientific advisers’ qualifications in leadership? What training did they receive for their leadership role?
Prime Minister. Do you know what a “QALY” is?
At your next appearance in front of the committee – I think that will be your seventeenth three-hour session – could you bring the figures that show the average cost to the economy of each QALY that was saved by the lockdown policy? And also how many QALYs were lost as a consequence of the lockdown policy?
Thank you Prime Minister. We look forward to seeing you again.
But nit for a VERY long time.
Prime Minister. Long after the lockdown policy had been eased, the UK was still subject to social distancing regulations. The ‘two metre’ rule was what did most damage to the economy, yet the World Health Organisation recommendation was one metre. Why did you persist in maintaining the distance at two metres even though it made Britain an international outlier and indirectly caused yet more deaths due to the damage it did to the economy?
Would the DG of the BBC prefer to be hung, shot, or beheaded ?
That’s an awful, terrible thing to say JohnB and I’m shocked, shocked that you would write it, even in jest. It’s hanged, not hung….
Horrific. Grammatical Armageddon. Take him away.
You’re right of course, Mark. I can only blame insufficient caffeine/nicotine. I shall commit seppuku immediately. 🙂
Nice article on the BBC about how the population are tuning into the BBC in droves (and netflix, and amazon, and Facebook and you tube)….
Hmmmm, obviously none of these would benefit from you understanding the actual risk….
Lord Hall: People have turned to BBC ‘in their droves’ during pandemic https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52788122
Now turning away in their droves I would think….